Like Lichen I am Made by Love

Dick Westheimer

Simon Schwendener gasps when he discovers
the lichen under his lens is a symbiont —
two species together that rely, one on the other,
to make a life. In a dream he says, Oh!

My love is like a brown brown fungus
fed sweet sugar by algae moistened with
a fungal touch, greened by the sun,
cell by cell—together rooted to rock.

I, too, am made of us: my lover who binds me
to the day with to-dos and don’ts, I harvest the sun
and bring her strawberries for breakfast, she floats
a single zinnia blossom in a bowl on the dining table,

drenches me with the sweat and smells of summer skin
until, like lichen, we are again not one but two,
each of us as different as rock is from water,
as sea from shore, as hand is from holding.

The Science

Simon Schwendener, a Swiss 19th century botanist, based much of his work trying to understand the mechanisms of plants. In the late 1860s, he turned his attention to lichens, which to that time had been considered a distinct organism. He discovered that it was really two types of organisms—algae and fungi—living in symbiosis (what he considered a mutually parasitic relationship). He found that the algae contributed carbon dioxide obtained from the air, and the fungus contributed water and minerals from rock or soil—thus feeding each other’s biological needs.

The Poet

Dick Westheimer has—in the company of his wife and writing companion Debbie— lived, gardened, and raised five children on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio. Dick has enjoyed picking bluegrass music with his neighbors and running and walking the trails on his and nearby farms. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His most recent poems have appeared in Whale Road Review, Minyan, Northern Appalachia Review, and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022. More at www.dickwestheimer.com.

Next poem: Living together by Patricia Hemminger